Laws, laws, everywhere there's laws.

The Internet being what it is, accessable in virtually every part of the world, what does one do when creating a website? Compliance to the laws of every country is impossible. A Canadian web developer came across this recently:

In February 2006, a part-time Canadian music student established a modest, non-commercial website that used collaborative "wiki" tools, such as those used by Wikipedia, to create an online library of public domain musical scores. Within a matter of months, the site – called the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) – featured more than 1,000 musical scores for which the copyright had expired in Canada.

Nineteen months later – without any funding, sponsorship or promotion – the site had become the largest public domain music score library on the Internet, generating a million hits per day, featuring more than 15,000 scores by in excess of 1,000 composers, and adding 2,000 new scores each month.

Ten days ago, the IMSLP disappeared from the Internet. Universal Edition, an Austrian music publisher, retained a Toronto law firm to demand that the site block European users from accessing certain works and from adding new scores for which the copyright had not expired in Europe. The company noted that while the music scores entered the public domain in Canada 50 years after a composer's death, Europe's copyright term is 20 years longer.

On Oct. 19, the law firm's stated deadline, the student took the world's best public domain music scores site offline. While the site may resurface – at least one volunteer group has offered to host it – the case places the spotlight on the compliance challenges for Canadian websites facing competing legal requirements.

www.thestar.com...

So, what is one to do when encountering international copywrite laws? Comply within your own country and be damned or take into account other countries laws?

[edit on 31-10-2007 by intrepid]

I would think that a server located in the country that the copyright does not infringe should stay online within areas the law allows. Now these bit torrent sites that have servers in other countries have band IPs from the US accessing there servers since it is illegal to down load music from them in the US. I would think the website owner will have to ban IPs from Europe accessing his site. He may need legal advice on this though.

I had a run in with something similar and it is extremely costly to defend in courts.

The juristical things around the net is one big confussion to me. Sometimes I think with the current copyright laws they could close down most of the net if they wanted to.

Even when I post pics and I do it with full credit to the original([im]). I'm still not sure if I'm violating any laws, as I didn't ask for permission.

I have an example from Denmark. It's about Bob Dylan's work, and a Norwegian guy, Eyolf Østrem who set up the net's most comprehensive site on his lyrics. Litterally complete of any song Bob had ever recorded or performed. I don't know for how long it was up, but I've known it for more than 10, maybe 15 years, it is dylanchords.com.

He tried to get written consent from Dylan's manegement, but never had any answer. He never heard a thing, before sometime in 2005 or 6, the MPA threaten him with lawsuits and he had to take off the chord part of his site.

Still to the satisfaction of me and numerous other afficiendoes, there were mirror sites. However suddenly this summer the one I used on web.archive.org were taken down too, all my links went 'target blank'. That was it, I thought and deleted them.

Much to my surprise, this morning as I'm writting this I checked... and the site was back on archives. Which means some ruling have deemed it incorrect to order them down.

And by the way Eyolf is still blogging on his dylanchords, now hosted on brokenbricks.com and also I found out they have a complete mirror of his old site too. But Eyolf won't be tabbing any more Dylan songs.

They can silence/kill the individual, but they can never kill the net.

Let's have a little personal responsibility. The most the website should have to do is have a disclaimer. If a user downloads something that is illeagle in their country...well that's just it, THEY downloaded it.